The Art of Conversation
by ally.enchantress
Summary: "He's getting angry now, and she wonders if it's because he desperately wants to unload on someone, but he knows she wouldn't be able to take it. She nods in acceptance. If she pushes any harder, she can't take the chance that he'll give in and tell her."


**Sorta different from my usual style, but I decided to try and see what happened. I think parts 1 & 2 turned out awesome, and part 3 is questionable. All in all, though, I like it very much. So... please enjoy! No real spoilers to report, I don't think...**

**Has not been beta-ed, all mistakes are my own. The most likely ones you'll find are tense differences (I know, it's a pet peeve of mine. *hangs head ashamedly*)**

**Disclaimer: I dream of the day when I don't have to say "These characters are not mine."**

**Stabler Residence**

She looks up from the clock, which has read 12:30 a.m. for the past two nights. She's not sure how to fix a digital clock when it's broken, but she can't just throw it away. The kids love the little designs around the face.

The garage door closes, and she waits to hear his footsteps in the hall. It always takes him a few minutes to leave the car when he comes home. She assumes he's psyching himself up for the normal life he has to live for only the most minimal amount of time. Working and living in two separate worlds must be difficult for him, she thinks, and she has sympathy for him.

Footsteps retreat down the cheap tiles, heading for the light in the kitchen that must have sparked his curiosity. He backs away slowly from the nightmare that lives in his car. He never lets anyone else drive that car. That's okay, though, because no one wants to. She checks the inside when she has the opportunity; it's her only source to his other world, not that she wants to be granted admission. The floor is generally littered with forlorn coffee cups, some marked with impressions from his teeth, some with his companion's lip gloss. There's a pair of binoculars sitting on the passenger seat, and a spare shirt in the back. A pillow and a blanket complete the ensemble.

It speaks of long nights doing nothing but watching. Always on the brink of adventure, danger, another experience filled with horrors and screams and tears. That is his world, not hers. Though she pushes when appropriate, asking for information of this world, she never gets it. It belongs to him, this world she both fears and envies.

Fears because it is so far from what she is comfortable exploring.

Envies because it, at least, gets everything he can give.

The footsteps stop, and she hears the familiar jingle of the keys he hangs on the hook. Deep-toned clicks signal that he has disabled his gun for the night, and a resigned thud is the drawer he shuts it in, ready to be opened in the morning when that world calls him back, away from her.

Here he is.

Her hands cling to the mug she's been holding for so long after it has gone cold, as though by the meager warmth of her hands she can warm it again. It's hot chocolate. He's always liked hot chocolate.

"Kathy." He's surprised to see her, she can tell. Maybe he's upset because he was hoping to avoid a confrontation. All their interactions seem to end in shouting these days.

She turns and forces a smile, but the weariness is evident in her drooping eyelids. "I made you hot chocolate," she says.

He takes it from her and sips. "It's cold."

Shrugging apologetically, she moves aside for him as he reaches behind her to put it in the microwave.

As the machine drones on, the yellow light seems so chilling that she wonders how it could possibly turn that cup of lukewarm liquid to simmering, comforting heat. Her eyes do not seek his when she examines his face. Instead, she searches for the signs of another wrinkle, a more prominent five o'clock shadow, another crystal of blue in his eyes shattered.

They caught a case today, she gathers, and it was horrible. Perhaps it dealt with children. She knows those are the worst cases for him. Back when she still wanted to understand, he would tell her the horrors, and then she would have nightmares. He would hold her as she cried, until she learned not to ask.

She's surprised he never has nightmares. But then, she thinks, maybe he has used up all his screams already. Without that alarm, she has no way to tell.

"How are you?" she asks impulsively.

For a moment he doesn't move, just stares at the mug, slowly revolving under the chilling light as the chocolate liquid inside succumbs to the heat neither of them can see. Then he turns to look at her, and she can tell there is a sort of dull surprise in his eyes. It's probably reflected in her own eyes because she can't remember the last time she asked that.

He regards her with caution, trying to discern her motives. When he finds it, she thinks, maybe he could please clue her in.

"I'm okay, Kath," he says finally. "Today was…" He struggles for a word, and she fights the instinct to cover her ears. "Today was…" Shutters close over his face, and the moment is gone. He sees the fright in her eyes, and he knows. She didn't mean to ask.

_Keep it away from me,_ she is saying. _Keep it away from my children._

She knows he understands, and that he agrees with her. That is why he doesn't talk to her.

The microwave beeps loudly, signaling a return to the matter at hand. The hot chocolate is done.

He tastes it, and she watches him choke down two swallows before she remembers: he likes his hot chocolate made with water, not milk, and the little mini marshmallows make him gag.

She hangs her head and softly apologizes. Pouring water into the pot on the stove, she tells him she'll make some more. He stops her as she is reaching for the cocoa powder.

"It's okay," he says. "I don't really want any."

She nods, though she doesn't understand anything. He puts the mug on the counter and smiles halfheartedly. "Thanks anyway," he tells her.

"Elliot?"

He glances over his shoulder.

She swallows her self-preservation, determined to at least make the gesture. "Do you, uh… Do you want to talk about it?"

As expected, he shakes his head, and she is ashamed by her silent sigh of relief. When he says 'no', it is firm and without regret. Still, she has to be sure.

"Are you sure? Because I'll listen."

"I said no, Kathy." He's getting angry now, and she wonders if it's because he desperately wants to unload on someone, but he knows she wouldn't be able to take it.

She nods in acceptance. If she pushes any harder, she can't take the chance that he'll give in and tell her. With this anger simmering now, he wouldn't be gentle when he told her, he would say it without emotion, and she would be left to cry her tears while he went upstairs to shower.

"I'm going to bed," he says, and he leaves the room.

She wraps her arms around the mug of hot chocolate, which is cooling rapidly. Blowing on it, she takes a sip and burns her tongue.

**Benson Residence**

He walks past her out the door, and without a backward glance, he is gone. She doesn't watch him down the hall. He'll be fine as long as he's away from her.

Closing the door, she sinks to the dirty carpet she's been meaning to clean since two years ago. He'd asked, she reminded herself. He'd wanted to know. But then she remembers that this isn't exactly true. It had been false bravado when he asked her what happened in her day, and it had been denial when he'd pushed her. He'd just been trying to show he cared enough to ask, to brave the chance that she might tell him, trusting that she wouldn't. And she had been horribly rude by actually answering.

She sighs, making a handprint in the strands of her carpet. The dirt doesn't bother her. She can always wash her hands later. The dirtiness inside of her makes her filthier than the carpet can ever be.

People saw she was unclean when they met her. Someone once told her it was something about the eyes, where you could just tell. Nick Ganzner had been a bastard with a disgusting fantasy life, but there was one thing he got right.

"_That's why people move away from you on the sofa, Olivia. You get inside sex offenders."_

She wrinkles her nose in disgust as his next words come back to her.

"_I'm not moving away."_

Of course he wasn't. It turned him on, she had realized all those years ago. Of course, that experience had thrown her off balance for much longer than she ever admitted to Cragen. She remembers how long it took her to believe again that there were people out there who didn't find her job perversely fascinating. Non-pervy people could still fall in love with her. There was hope.

That was eleven years ago, and now she was back where she started. Again.

She hadn't thought this guy would be "the one", but she'd though they had a chance, at least for a while. She could have been reasonably happy with him.

And now she just went and ruined another perfectly possible relationship. She draws another tally on the chart in her head and moves on. It won't do to dwell on it. There will be another. Always another date, always another man. Truthfully, she's getting a little sick of it.

She stands from the doorway and finishes her glass of wine. She bemoans how this is her favorite wine, and she can't pour his portion back in the bottle because he's tasted it already.

Discussing sex crimes over dimmed lights and glasses of wine.

How romantic.

She debates over drinking his glass; at least then it wouldn't go to waste. She can't bring herself to take the first sip, though the liquid laps tauntingly against her closed lips. It's suddenly foreign to her, uncontaminated and healthy. It has traces of him in it, and even though he's probably halfway home by now, she refuses to touch any part of him with her diseased mouth.

Her mouth has shouted curses to her captain and her prey, suspects both innocent and guilty. Her mouth has pressed against a murderer's, and a rapist's. She doesn't want their disgusting essence to touch anyone else. Nobody deserves this.

Water washes the translucent white from the sink, the last traces of the wine she hasn't been able to drink. The vision of teary pools follows the alcohol down the drain because she doesn't need this right now.

On the table, red roses sit in a crystal vase, and she has a sudden urge to burn them because she can see drops of blood falling from Eliza Ashton's body when she looks at them.

She opens the little closet where her washing machine is and puts the flowers on top. She won't do the wash for a while, not until the roses are dead.

Wine glasses take up a new residence next, in the dishwasher. She empties it of all its former occupants, giving them back to their families once again because they belong in the cupboards, not solitary confinement. Always there are two wine glasses remaining, the only things in the machine when she starts it again. Their prone forms are shunned, always reminders of a disastrous night and therefore unloved and unprotected. For a while she sits before the dishwasher, pretending she can see the soapy water as it drenches the wine glasses and scrubs them mercilessly in its attempt to rid them of the scars that aren't theirs but another's, hers.

But the water cannot clean what hides below what it can reach, what has seeped into the very orifices of the glass. The glasses will bear the invisible marks of another mistake, and when this realization hits her she flees to her bed. Her living room still bears witness to her sorrow, but her bedroom is yet a sanctuary.

She slips from her blue dress and hangs it up again. Later, when the roses have died, she will have an excuse to throw them away, and then she will wash the dress. Blue is more fitting, anyway. She cannot have nightmares about blue. Blue is an anchor color, the color of his eyes, and that automatically makes blue the safe color, the color she can always resort to when everything else triggers visions of pain.

The clock on her nightstand reads 12:30 a.m.

A new day has come since the man has departed. She remembers his name, vaguely. Jeff. She decides she doesn't like that name. It is a memory name, a name that brings to mind his horrified face as she recounted as gently and evasively as possible their most recent case, what little of it she could divulge. He put his hand to his mouth and turned away, not wanting her to see that she had made a grown man cry.

She had decided not to tell him that she saw such things more often than he would think.

Ensconced in her mattress's halfhearted embrace, she lies on top of her quilt and stares at the white above her. Her ceiling is the stretch of canvass on which she paints her nightmares, in the early mornings when no screams echo against the walls because she has learned from her victims that they so often do no good. In the afternoons and evenings when she lies as she does now, trying not to wonder if she should have done this instead of that, refusing to think that maybe saying a little less talk would have fixed the breaking relationship or just left her with an empty bed and a bad taste in her mouth.

Sighing once again, she rolls over onto her side and sets away her charred paintbrush and bloody paints. She will try for sleep tonight. Another date, another fiasco, another chance to try again tomorrow.

Her eyes close, and the world she lives in becomes the world she dreams of. They are one and the same, no matter what she sees.

**16****th**** Precinct**

The first thing he notices is that she has dark circles under her eyes. It isn't as though this is uncommon; they may as well have been painted on for all the changing they have done over the years.

She smiles at him, a weak uplift of her lips that barely touches her eyes, and he remembers: she had a date last night.

"How'd it go?" he asks, fishing.

She shrugs noncommittally and hands him the coffee he wanted and never asked for. "We broke up," she says finally. Her computer beeps 'good morning', and she jiggles the mouse in response.

He doesn't say anything else, watching her eyes skitter away. Surely she is getting frustrated by now. It has been eleven years since he's known her, and he has learned that her definition of a serious relationship has become what most people consider casual. He knows what the problem is; he has the same one. He wishes she wouldn't have to choose between her job and herself.

Never does he say he's sorry about what happened last night, and she neither expects it nor wants it. Sympathy is something she does not want from him, he knows, even if he sometimes gives it anyway.

Last night, he'd emerged from the shower, and Kathy was still downstairs. He was far beyond feeling guilty about not speaking to her. They don't tell each other anything anymore, so why should it have been any different last night? He appreciates the gesture, knowing how much it took her to ask in the first place, but he wishes she never said anything. He could have choked down the hot chocolate and gone to bed without incident. Instead they both fell asleep regretting the words both said and unsaid.

He loses himself in his thoughts, not paying any attention to the woman across from him, who is staring keenly at him.

His eyes are haunted, she decides, and she knows it has something to do with the case. But it won't last forever.

The case will be solved at some point, she hopes. Even if it isn't, the details will blur in their minds, sinking into a substance that mingles with the pool of horrors instead of floating above it. Really, it's just another case. Nothing about it signifies something that would be high profile, even though she thinks every single one of their cases should be high profile, or at least high importance. She could do without the media interference, especially on this one. Eliza isn't shy in the technical sense of the word, but she doesn't like being the center of attention. She handles herself well, but the discomfort that accompanies the spotlight is not something she enjoys.

She can relate, she thinks as her computer reboots to avoid 'potentially threatening software'. For a moment she ponders the threat to her computer security, and she wonders if the NYPD would mind if she pulled a few tricks to keep it from rebooting. She learned some things from her days in Computer Crimes. Maybe she can finally put them to use.

In the end, she decides against it. She doesn't like to bring up her stint in Comp Crimes; Elliot always gets this look in his eye, caught somewhere between anger and pain. Munch and Fin don't particularly like it either, and she can't really blame them. Nobody really wants to deal with a pissed Elliot Stabler. She does because she really couldn't imagine life without him. Actually, she has imagined it, once or twice. It's always someplace dark and cold where she can't figure out why she's living.

She looks up, and their eyes collide. Sparks fly. She smiles awkwardly. "What?" she asks.

He's debating over something, and he doesn't speak for the longest time, until finally he says, "What's wrong?"

What is she to tell him? That she told her boyfriend about the case, and she scared him so much he broke up with her? She sighs. "Nothing, El. I'm fine."

"Right."

He doesn't say anything else, but the haunt she has noticed in his eyes stays until she can't handle it anymore. "I'll show you mine if you show me yours," she bargains.

He is confused. "What?"

"What's wrong?" she persists.

By unspoken agreement, they abandon their desks in favor of the relative privacy of an interrogation room. Appropriate, she thinks. Hopefully, though, she doesn't have to push that hard to make him talk.

He sits in the interrogator's chair, though, and she feels the tables turn as she sits in the other. "Talk," she says.

"You first."

"Don't know where to start." She is mumbling, embarrassed at what he is asking of her.

He smirks, and the weight on her shoulders seems just a little bit lighter. "How about the beginning?"

"I left work."

She's being a bit of a smartass, she knows, but it's worth it to hear the chuckle he gives her.

"Just… Went out to eat, with Jeff…" She shrugs, twisting her hands in her lap. "Came back to my apartment, had a glass of wine. He, uh… he…"

"Did he hurt you?" Hackles rising, he stands. Fire burns in his eyes, and Olivia panics.

"No, El, he didn't… He didn't do anything." She bites her lip. "It was me. I…"

He regards her with interest. "Liv, this isn't gonna work unless you talk to me. Just… just say it, okay? I won't judge."

Her eyebrows rise; she can't help it. Hurt flickers in his expression, and sorrow responds in hers.

"He asked me about my day. It was just… in passing, you know? Sounded like something a boyfriend would ask. Only, I…" She hangs her head. "I told him." When he doesn't say anything she continues, wondering whether to feel heartened or worried. "He… I made him cry, and… he left. He broke up with me and left. I… I guess he just couldn't take it."

He offers her a half-smile, and she accepts that, along with his own story. "Kathy asked how my day was, too," he said. "I almost told her. Didn't, though. I didn't want to handle the look on her face. Not after…" He trails off, but she gets it.

"What's different about her?" she asks. "Eliza, I mean."

He shrugs. "I guess she just… reminds me of you."

There's nothing she can think of to say to that. So she doesn't. She sits cross-legged on the chair and twists her fingers in her lap, draws pictures on her jeans, and pits her right hand against her left hand in thumb wars until he finally speaks again.

"She made me hot chocolate," he says. "I guess she thought the conversation would go better."

"That was nice of her," she vaguely comments, scrambling now because she doesn't know what to do with what he's told her. Silence falls again, and her right hand defeats her left hand. Time to start a new tournament, or just move on. Maybe she can invent "index finger wars" before he says anything she can work with.

He takes a deep breath, and she is suddenly worried. If he gives her some revelation, she's going to need that wine she dumped last night because comprehending it is going to take a while. But what he says isn't radical or life-changing at all. It's quite simple, really, but it reinforces her belief that their most useless, boring conversations about nothing of consequence are the conversations when they accomplish the most.

"She made the hot chocolate with milk and marshmallows," he says.

Immediately, she reacts. "And you like it with water."

He nods. And then he looks at her, sizing her up. "You take yours with water, too, but you put that hazelnut creamer stuff in it." When she laughs, he does to.

"You say that like you have something against hazelnut creamer," she tells him, and he grins.

"Maybe I do," he says. "How would you know?"

Grinning, she stands, mission accomplished. "Oh, I'd know," she promises.

Pleased with themselves, they return to the squad room. Everyone stares at them because rumors abound, and new ones have probably started in their absence. They don't really pay attention to the locker room gossip, but they know the ones about them by heart. Sometimes they want to strangle the poor people who have nothing better to do with their time than write scandals that have no foundation to stand on. Today they don't really care. It's not really important.

Another day, another place, another tick of the clock that measures time only in linear form, not how many years have been erased just by a simple discussion about hot chocolate and feelings usually kept hidden.

**Review for me, please!**


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